Swan song

Military Images, Jul/Aug 1999 by Harlowe, Jerry

A strange vessel with a stranger name has just arrived. What Miantonomoh may actually signify we shall not proceed to inquire; what she represents is a matter of very great importance, indeed. She is a real, genuine monitor - a true specimen of that singular American fleet on which Americans rely for their position on the seas. As these vessels resemble no other floating thing, it follows almost inevitably that, if the American ship builders are right, ours must be wrong, and it is our imperative duty to investigate the subject without prejudice or delay.

The British navy began a review of their iron fleet and eventually decided to build modified monitors to add to their sea service. The British would add three large seagoing monitors to their fleet: Devastation, Thunderer, and Dreadnaught. These modified monitors mounted their gun turrets and a small superstructure atop an armored breastwork above the main deck. This was a design improvement the British claimed would help to eliminate one of the major design faults of the American monitors: habitability. (The American monitor class had a deserved reputation as hot hell-holes below deck when at sea or in battle with the hatches secured and overall ventilation at an almost absolute minimum.) The British navy would retain active monitors in their navy into the Great War of 1914. And, too, the French took a serious look at the American monitor system and later purchase the monitor U.S.S. Onondaga for study and use in their navy.

As for the U.S. Navy, once Miantonomoh returned home and went into mothballs, the American navy went into a deep depression and almost disappeared. Rather than going forward with ship and ordnance design and construction, a reign of deconstruction was visited upon the navy during the rampant corruption of the presidency of U.S. Grant. What was left of the navy floundered about the world in wooden hulls under canvas sail and cowered in third rate insecurity. But, although seriously hampered, naval men of conscience were working during those dark days, establishing a body of work that laid the keel for a small but quiet ship of evolution that would re-float American's naval power, bringing it to the forefront in 1898 with the Imperial coming-out party of the Spanish-American war. Although by that time the original civil war ship Miantonomoh had been destroyed in the process of "rebuilding," the rebuilt ship took twenty years of rebuilding before being recommissioned in the navy before the Spanish-American War.

As for the ship U.S.S. Augusta, she returned to the United States in 1867 as the mission ended. Augusta's crew was paid off and she was left to her caretakers in the navy yard where she rodc out several months of deterioration until she was sold out of the United States navy on December 2, 1868. The buyers refitted the well used ship and returned the vessel to merchant service as Magnolia. Somewhat refreshed by her refit, the ship once again returned to sea to run the coast between New York and Savannah, sailing for another nine years in her commercial capacity. On September 30, 1877, while in route to New York, Magnolia was battered by a hard sca until her tired hull and machinery succumbed to the severe gale and she slipped below the waves to her proper grave.